Hovered over the keyboard of my iPhone 7, my fingers surged with anxious energy. No, I wasn’t about to check my account balance, dial in for a job interview or
choose the toppings for my Domino’s delivery— quite the contrary— I was formulating a message on my latest, millennial dating endeavor: Bumble. 

Bumble, unlike its dating app counterparts, puts the ball almost entirely in the female’s court, (at least in my experience with the ‘females seeking males’ interface) so in a nutshell, it’s the ‘Sadie Hawkins dance’ of dating applications. Contrasting with Tinder, in which either party can make the first move, Bumble requires that women initiate a chat in 24 hours or less. 

Two things that make my stomach hurt? Making small talk via text and time constraints. But for some reason, I am oddly infatuated with Bumble. It’s kind of like pairing black and blue. We’re not entirely sure about how we feel about the color combo, but we do it anyway.

Alright, so on with the point of this article and the elusive “I’m too heavy” title. I’m getting there. I swear. 

As is customary on my blog, I’ll now delve into one of my many fatal flaws as a human. Today’s focus: my irrational fear of “coming on too strong.” I certainly don’t feel this way in regards to every single element of my life, mind you— I once wore a ball gown to a pizza shop— but as far as dating goes, it is a tremendous worry of mine.

So there I was, on Bumble, wrestling with the daunting task of composing that first, initiative message to my match. My thought process went a little something like this: How do I come across as calm, cool and collected while also being straightforward about what I want while also acting somewhat sexy while also not making this boy run for the hills? At least for me, the fear of coming on too strong applies to every single human interaction I ever make— romantic, or not.

Why are we so worried about being “too much”? When did that ever become a thing? 

As I write this post, I’m sitting on a bench in Washington Square park. I chose the first seat that I saw, which just so happened to be facing a jungle gym infested with children. After about 17 minutes of sitting here just blatantly staring like a total creeper, I’ve come to some conclusions.

The best and worst feature that children encompass is their filter— or rather, their lack thereof. Tiny humans express whatever the fuck comes to mind, whenever the fuck it comes to mind. They might be seated next to you in a pew at church, but if something in their tiny brain says “I’m hungry” you bet your tiny cup of grape juice that the kid will make it known to not only everyone in the building, but also the heavens above.   

But never has a screaming, red-faced child paused to consider “hey, maybe I’m coming on too strong with this.” 

So, when did we develop the fear of being “too much”? The answer to this question varies, but I believe that my concern stems from my crushing fear of rejection, which I began to experience the moment I got cut from the school production of Pinocchio. But if not for being cut from the play, I wouldn’t have discovered how much I enjoy writing. If I’d never uncovered that joy, this blog wouldn’t even exist. 

Ok, enough about Pinocchio. Plain and simple, here are some sentiments that we must practice: 

You will be too much for some people. Those are just not your people.

In regards to Bumble, I’m not too much for him. He is simply too little. 

Never, ever, EVER dilute yourself because someone can’t handle you at 100 proof. You aren’t shitty, watered-down tequila, honey, you are PATRÓN. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

You will always be too much for someone. Too kind, too smart, too relaxed, too loud… 
But as Samantha Jones from Sex and the City says in season 4, “Honey, if I worried about what every bitch in New York was saying about me, I’d never leave the house.” 

Back to the children in the park analogy— one of the clearest memories I have as a child is ruthlessly pushing my poor friend Abbie headfirst down a snow-covered hill in grade school. In kinder words, my mom basically said to me: ‘Katy you seriously fucked up now go say you’re sorry.’  

I don’t pride myself in many things, but one of my strengths to this day is apologizing for my mistakes. “Sorry I’m late,” “Sorry for hitting your mailbox with my car,” “Sorry for eating all of your leftovers when I was drunk” …you get the picture. 

Always, always apologize for your mistakes. But don’t you dare apologize for being who you are. 

You aren’t too heavy, they are just too weak to carry you. 

You aren’t too much. 

You’re damn perfect.

Image is not my own; via Flikr.

Ernest Hemingway once said, “write hard and clear about what hurts.”
​So, after quite the blog hiatus, I’m doing just that.

I’m tired. Really, truly, I’m tired, and have been for some time. Tired of mindlessly dragging myself from one almost-lover to the next; the vicious cycle of lifting my hopes up only to watch them ruthlessly be pulled out from under me like a deflated parachute. 

For years I let my romantic frustrations win. The anxiety of it all would envelope me in a thick haze of doubt and loneliness, clouding my judgement, provoking me to lash out. I have allowed myself to become riddled with embarrassment over my inability to be loved. As my lacking love life continued to feel more and more hopeless, I’d purse my lips, lower my head and convince myself that I’d done something wrong. “God, what is wrong with me?”
You’ve heard this narrative before. 

However on a recent flight to Los Angeles, I came to a new conclusion. 

Playing past almost-romances in my head like a sickening highlight reel, I realized that by considering each extinguished flame to be a major loss, I have been severely discounting myself. While it’s cold, hard fact that I haven't been entirely successful in the past few years with dating, I’m not continuing with life completely empty-handed. I haven’t lost entirely. 

Whether they know it or not, each and every almost-lover has given me something: a lesson, a song, boldness, tenderness. I no longer wish to view the moments spent with these people as “lost time.” Listening to scratched vinyl, the moonlight glistening on bare skin, driving in his car without a destination, hair flapping in the ocean air… I refuse to label these precious moments that I’ve spent with almost-lovers as losses.

You leave a very small piece of you with each and every person you meet.  

When the sinking feeling of “Shit. I guess whatever “this” was is over now..” overcomes you, remember this: 

You are more than just the number of people you’ve almost-loved.

He or she was not just a failed attempt at what you will eventually have with someone else.
Every potential relationship is either love, or a lesson. Don’t look at it any other way. 

Photo: Tumblr, no known source.

‘It all happens for a reason’:
A string of pretty words popularized by Hallmark cards and Facebook comments, which in most situations proves to be completely and utterly irrelevant. 

“Oh there, there, friend. It all happens for a reason.”
Whether we believe it to be true or not, we’ve all either said it or received it at one point in our lives.

As humans, we are constantly digging for reason. 
After all, It is what we’ve been taught since we were young. 
Identify the answer, and support with fact. 
Isn’t that what our teachers have always said?

Which element of the periodic table contains the most protons? Explain your reasoning. 
Analyze Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and identify symbolism. Explain your reasoning.

Explain. your. reasoning.

I hate to break it to you, but--
sometimes you’re just dealt a bad hand in life, and there isn’t a reason for it.
Sometimes, shit. just. happens.

No embellished, prophetic justification involved.

If we convince ourselves that reason is hidden behind every single interworking of our universe, we’ll constantly be waiting for that reason to show itself. The only thing that will arrive, however, is disappointment. 

Stop searching for reason in every misgiving that you experience in life.

Sometimes, you just lose the game.

Sometimes, you just miss the train.

Sometimes, people just leave. 

Just. because.

Life tip:
Instead of dwelling endlessly in the tangled realm of reason,
put a hand to your chest and feel. 

Feel each rhythmic tremor that your heart sends rippling through your chest. 
Feel the swelling of your lungs as breath is taken in and released. 
Feel the warmth of your skin against your fingertips.
Inhale, exhale.

Congratulations, you’re alive. 

Maybe it’s about time that you refuse to be content with simply existing,  
when every fiber of your being is ready to start LIVING.

Move on. Your next chapter awaits.  

​What do showers, stoplights and internet outages have in common? 
They all happen to be situations where I’ve experienced great epiphanies. 

I was driving home from my friend Jillian’s house.
My friends and I had just spent the past several hours pretending to watch reality television, resorting to our usual ritual of discussing our disheveled romantic lives and plans for the upcoming week. After the third or fourth mention of various high school couples that have ‘finally’ called it quits, I’d had my fill. 

Early 2000’s teenaged-angst tracks filled my speakers (what else?!) as I pulled my Jeep up to the stoplight of an entirely vacant intersection. Something instantly caught my eye. 

It was nearly impossible to miss the gigantic mass that was our newly-built high school which loomed ominiously to my left. As it is customary to react when thoughts of high school are unearthed from their proper burial, I shuddered. The building was lit up, an eerie beacon in the dark night. I glanced up at an unfinished stairwell, thinking of how many feet will eventually trudge up and down its steps, creating indentations from years of wear. Those feet will belong to future highschoolers; some bright-eyed and blissfully unaware of the hardship they’ll encounter in the future, some, secretly depressed and desperately trying to live up to others’ expectations... Some, destined for pristine, Ivy-league schools and white picket fences, and others, confined to a life of minimum-waged worry.

​Call me cynical, but high school wasn’t exactly the best time for me. 

I gripped my steering wheel harder. I was instantly flooded with horrific memories from high school. Obviously I’m being incredibly dramatic, but nonetheless, I made a number of mistakes within the peeling paint of its walls. I was weak. I was a pushover. My persona back then practically screamed: ‘Please! Walk all over me! I’ll tell you ‘I’m fine’ even though I’m secretly dying inside! Don’t worry about me!’ 

​The day I crossed the stage at graduation in my mustard-colored gown, I think I might have taken a deep breath for the first time in four years. 

Glancing back at the yellow squares of light protruding from the monstrous, brick walls, my mind began to race. If I had a chance to go back and shake some sense into highschool-Katy— tell her what to do, say, wear, and act— would I take it? Instantly, my life was beginning to feel like a clichéd movie plot. 

Junior year I was utterly convinced that love-at-first-sight existed. A boy who sat opposite me in AP Stats with disheveled hair and perpetually scraped knees held my affections for the entirety of two semesters. Did I ever work up the courage to talk to him? Of course not. But did I spend an extra twenty minutes every morning making my hair appear effortlessly messy when it was realistically pin-straight? Absolutely. 
Last week, I found myself in my local bar, face-to-face with this same boy, three years later. His hair was still the same floppy mess that it was in high school, but he’d traded his scraped knees for a pair of beer-stained khakis. 
“Sup,” he’d addressed me with a nod of his head. 
Two semesters of utter infatuation and extra hair-primping, yet all I was offered was a haphazard “Sup”? Bullshit. I’d forced my lips into a hollow smile.
Thank God I now know that I deserve better than that, I’d thought to myself. 
The sad truth: a simple ‘Sup’ from this same boy back in high school would’ve sent me on a power trip to the moon. 

The way I see it, though: that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
​All of the f*ck-ups, tears, and fawning over unaware, preoccupied boys give way to the good stuff in life. And I mean, the gooood stuff. The laughing-'til-your-stomach-aches type of 'good stuff.'
The type of moments and people that aren’t simply presented to you without any sort of previous effort. High school isn't forever, but its effects are lasting.

Life is kinda like Mario Kart. 
You simply can’t unlock any of those snazzy Bubble Bikes without a little bit of elbow grease in the time trials. Life can be messy. Sure, you’ll wipe out on a few banana peels and red shells in your lifetime, but who's to say that you won’t cross that checkered finish line on top eventually? You know the winning characters’ little victory-dances at the end of each race while the cheesy song plays in the background? That could be you one day. Keep your head up. Chain Chomps bite everyone in the ass at some point or another. 

Remember those times when you’d think you were in first place, only to realize you’ve been looking at the wrong player’s screen the entire time and you’re actually aimlessly crashing into walls? Sometimes we get way too invested in other peoples’ business to tend to our own sinking ships. With a little focus and attention paid to your own aspirations, you’ll blossom. 

If I had the chance to go back in time and whisper in highschool-Katy’s ear, it would only be to say: “The best is yet to come.”

Take a millennial who makes a habit of gallivanting around city streets, throwing back pretty cocktails with her equally-dazzling possé of friends. This said-millennial (let’s call her ‘typical millenial’) is also heavily involved in her Instagram account, posting up heavily-filtered photos with captions like, “my bitches!!!” and “TGIF.” Post-night out, this same millennial is looking a lot less pristine. Cue the sprawled-on-the-bathroom-floor “I’m never drinking ever again” snapchats and perpetual hangover. Remember that bright-eyed, squad selfie from last night? Well, those eyes have since reddened, and the squad is now scattered— each taking refuge in their own disheveled bed. Will our typical millennial snap a selfie for Insta in her current state of hangover Hell? I wouldn’t bet money on it. 

This isn’t an instructional blog post, begging my readers to ‘PLEASE stop posting happy photos of yourselves eating cool food in cool places.’ I’m simply hoping to shed light on the current reality. 

Here is what I know to be true: Most people aren’t as happy as they are on Instagram. And if they are, by some stroke of luck, they aren’t that happy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are so many moments that we don’t see. We don’t see the panic attacks, the tears, the homesickness, the hurt… All of these incredibly human emotions, we’ll never see while scrolling through social media. 
Because they’re ugly, they’re difficult to talk about, and most terribly of all: they make people uncomfortable. People don’t like to talk about the things they’re uncomfortable with. 

We can’t beat ourselves up over what we see on Instagram. 
We simply cannot look like the people we see on our feeds. This is due to the fact that sometimes, those people don’t even look like that themselves. 

These days, we’re lucky to get a 6-second response to our snapchat selfies.
​ 
In his book, Modern Romance, comedian Aziz Ansari makes the hair-raising point that in past decades, people were generally less picky about who they wanted to spend their lives with, have children with, and—essentially-- die with. They simply had one job back then: procreate. If you found love through securing your baby-making mate and multitude of able-bodied children, that was simply an added bonus.

I— rather hungrily— read Ansari’s novel cover-to-cover after a particularly rowdy weekend trip to New York City. As impeccable as it was, I couldn’t help but feel a bit discouraged by some of the statistics he mentioned. Sprawled in the Delta terminal, bearing half a dozen nightclub stamps and several, mysterious bruises, I was positively baffled. 

“Statistically speaking,” one section read. “Women living in cities don’t land a husband until age 30” (paraphrased by moi, but the basic point remains). I’d nearly gagged. Seeing as though I planned on moving to the city post-grad, that left approximately eight years for myself as a city girl to somehow secure my Mr. Right. Even a stylish woman with perky boobs like Carrie Bradshaw couldn’t manage such a feat. EIGHT MORE YEARS of kissing the wrong guys, enduring excruciating dates and crying over idiotic text messages. Is it possible to be exhausted by something that hasn’t yet begun?

Even now in my trials and tribulations of male encounters, I can confidently say that I’ve been around the block a few times. Date after date, hook-up after hook-up, I’m left fairly satisfied, but not really. Clearly, I’ve missed some sort of memo. All Mary had to do to win George’s heart in Its a Wonderful Life was EXIST, and fall dramatically into a swimming pool. 

WHAT THE ACTUAL F***.

What am I doing wrong?
The truth is: absolutely nothing. Like my man Aziz said in his book, people are more picky these days. They’re not simply looking for their perfect ‘mate,’ they're looking for their perfect MATCH; that one person that makes their insides melt like M&Ms in the sun and give them that ‘home’ sensation. 

Let’s be real. When we say we’re “sick of modern dating,” what we really mean is: we’re sick of waiting for the right person. Mr. Right is simply taking his sweet, sweet time to show face in our lives. And, the reason why the ‘waiting game’ never seemed to exist in earlier decades, is *ding, ding, ding* because for the most part, it didn’t. In our current technological age when everything can be attained at the click of a button— and a room without Wifi is the equivalent of a prison cell— we’ve gotten so accustomed to instant satisfaction. I’ll admit I’m immensely guilty of this. If a website page doesn’t load in less than ten seconds I throw a mental fit and consider setting fire to my Mac.
​
Heaven forbid we send a “hey” text, awaiting that three-dot-bubble-of-death, and more than twenty minutes pass. If he waits over a few hours, sound the alarm. We might as well change our names and move to a different zip code by that point. However, if we were to approach a guy in person and say “hey,” a reply that took more than twenty minutes would be enough to generate a certain level of concern for the guy’s well-being instead of his romantic interest. Odd to think about it that way, right? 

​At this very moment, my future husband is out there somewhere, most likely in his underwear eating a sandwich. He could, by some small stroke of luck, be considering what it will be like to know me someday. But more realistically, he’s probably thinking about something else. And that’s okay.

It’s okay to feel anxious about love. In truth, its the current, digital age that has been the driving force of a lot of the anxiety that we all seem to feel. The worst possible thing that we can do is blame ourselves for what we consider to be a deadly case of ‘single-ness.’
It’s alright to reflect fondly on the love stories of past decades, but we must remember that comparison is deadly. To put it simply: times are different now. Love doesn’t work entirely in the same way that it used to. But, that doesn’t mean that it isn't capable of being totally magical once we finally experience it for ourselves. We must triumph over our anxieties and put them to rest. 

Friends, I believe that there IS hope for us. 

Someday, I’ll look back on this blog post in an entirely different decade, alongside my future husband (who will probably still be eating a sandwich), and laugh at how ‘cynical’ I’d been. 
“Oh 2016 Katy, you have no idea what you’re in for…”

It was a particularly long and dreadful school day in 2014 when I’d first experienced ugliness in its most bewitching form. 

​I was making my way across the high school parking lot, several hours after the last bell had rung for the day. I’d spent about three hours after my classes had finished, editing news articles for the school paper until the janitor gave me the ‘hurry up and get out’ eyebrow raise. Even with the blurred vision that is brought about by hours of squinting at a computer monitor, I caught a faint glimpse of a piece of paper fluttering in the wind, secured by the jaws of my windshield wipers.

I brushed it off, convinced it was either a parking ticket (I’m no stranger to these), or a nondescript ad for tai kwon do lessons. In truth, it was neither. 

Once when I was nine, I’d had the wind knocked out of me while traveling in my family’s bright red speedboat. We’d hit a monstrous wave head on, and my small-person lungs simply didn’t agree with the momentum. I gasped for air, my eyes blurry with tears and assumed that moment would be ‘the end.’ The air -- and the day’s joy -- quickly returned with a McDonald's chocolate milkshake.
Standing in the empty parking lot, clutching a piece of notebook paper that dripped with pencil-scrawled hatred, made that day on the speedboat a cake walk in comparison. 

Essentially, the note confirmed everything that I suspected to be true about myself in high school: that the majority of the people within those yellowing walls and disintegrating ceiling tiles considered me as hilarious and stale as a practical joke.
I reacted to the note the same way that anyone else in my circumstances would have: I pretended it never happened, while the anxiety of it all ate away at my insides like moth larvae in a coat closet. I looked into the eyes of my classmates, wondering if he or she was the penman of the letter, questioning every friendship I ever made and robbing myself of even a shred of joy. I drove myself mad, pouring over the pages of past yearbooks, convinced that if I could just figure out who’d penned the note, I’d finally earn peace. 

Eventually, I graduated high school and began the greatest endeavor of my entire life thus far: college. The sleepless nights and ravaging anxiety that the letter had brought into my final year of school soon dissolved, and I’d nearly forgotten about it entirely. 

The reason why I decided to unearth this story from the innermost archives of my mind, is the fact that I consider it to be a very defining moment for me. I see life as being a series of soaring highs and staggering lows, and this was one of my most distinct ‘low’s’. 

No human is completely without blemish. Considerably my most fatal flaw, is my tireless need to drive myself absolutely bonkers with over-analysis. Every once in a while, I become consumed by the idea that even the closest of my friends secretly hate me and the horrible reality that I could never be loved or married, among other things. But it is in these moments that I pinpoint the enemy: myself. Or, my mind, for that matter. And the sad truth is, it’s not me alone who is guilty of doing this. In fact, I’m sure you’re just as guilty as I am. 

Genuinely, it is really none of my business what other people think of me. If I make this my business— if I MAJOR in ‘caring about what they think of me,’— I will wither away until I’m nothing but a sack of meaningless, passionless bones. If we spent a considerable amount of time dwelling on every negative comment, horrible bully, and lie we hear about ourselves each time they come about, we’d be selling our souls over to the ugliness. We are not the reflection of those corrupt people who can’t see us for who we truly are. We are a picture of vibrant color and loveliness, and no one has the right to convince us otherwise. We can’t let the behavior of others rob us of our peace.